Fix This Writing Mistake to Engage Readers with the Right Challenges

First, there’s the blow-off classes, where 80 percent of your grade comes from fill-in-the-blank worksheets. To pass, all you really have to do is show up.

Then, there are the classes taught by “real hardasses.” These classes kept you up well past midnight, flipping frenetically through flashcards, chugging coffee and energy drinks.

Though one class is incredibly easy, and the other is mind-numbingly difficult, they are actually two sides of the same coin. They both rely on worksheets, textbooks, lectures, essay questions, and culminate in the undergraduate cycle of doom: cram, regurgitate, forget, repeat.

The third kind of class, however, sidesteps the whole messy system.

I was lucky to have a few classes like that, but one stands out in particular: Honors Shakespeare. The professor was intelligent, and very well-read. Beyond her academic credentials, though, she was an inspiring teacher.

In her classroom, I never felt lectured to, or really even “taught.” But her teaching left me passionate, fired-up, and with a new appreciation for the classic plays and the world they came from.

Instead of forcing the information down our throats, or spoon-feeding it to us, this professor handed us the utensils and let us eat for ourselves.

The difference between “easy” and “engaging”

Many writers fear becoming the “hardass” professor. I know I do. We want our writing to be digestible, not abstruse.

But, in purging our content of any whiff of pedantry, many of us fall too hard on the other side of the spectrum.

We confuse “easy to read” with “easy ideas,” and instead of prompting a stimulating, engaging discussion, our words fall flat … and fall out of our readers’ heads as quickly as Statistics 101.

Helping your readers “flow”

You’ve likely heard of “flow.” It’s the state of deep concentration we feel when we are engaged in a purposeful and enjoyable task.

Rock climbers feel flow when they climb a challenging peak, chess masters feel flow when they play a worthy opponent, motorcyclists feel flow when they’re following the lines on a graceful curve.

You know who else feels flow? Readers.

Csikszentmihalyi even cites it as a quintessential example of a flow activity.

“… one of the most frequently mentioned enjoyable activities the world over is reading. Reading is [a flow] activity because it requires the concentration of attention and has a goal, and to do it one must know the rules of written language.”

According to Csikszentmihalyi, in order for an activity to be enjoyable (and therefore a source of flow):

It has to have rules or require skills that must be learned.

It must provide clear goals and feedback.

We have to be able to control the outcome.

In short, flow activities have to be challenging — but they can’t just be any kind of challenging.

To achieve flow, the challenge has to be appropriate for the participant’s skills. If the activity is not challenging enough, we get bored. If the activity is too challenging, we grow frustrated. Either way, the result is disinterest.

Of course, you can write content that is pleasurable but not challenging. However, Csikszentmihalyi makes in important distinction between pleasure and enjoyment:

“… we can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention.”

Pleasure is fleeting: We don’t have to be engaged to find something amusing or entertaining. But to have a truly enjoyable experience, we have to be invested. To be invested, we must first be challenged.

When these stars align — when we find an appropriate challenge and become invested — magic happens. We see things differently, we learn something new about ourselves, we find the world around us transformed.

“Overcoming a challenge inevitably leaves a person feeling more capable, more skilled,” Csikszentmihalyi writes. “After an enjoyable experience we know that we have changed, that our self has grown.”

My Shakespeare professor knew how to engage her students — how to gauge their skill level and provide appropriate challenges. And she knew that if she did it well, we would leave her class transformed.

Not all challenges are created equal

So, how do you write in ways that engage your readers and leave them transformed?

First, creating appropriate challenges doesn’t mean pulling out a thesaurus. Your challenges have to be relevant and what Csikszentmihalyi calls “nontrivial.”

That’s why you want to avoid a complicated checkout process or website that isn’t mobile-optimized. In those situations, the challenges you’ve created for your potential customers are completely irrelevant to their goals. User-experience issues are so frustrating because they’re outside the realm of the intended goal and will actually hinder a flow experience rather than create it.

I’m not saying you need to be a true beginner without any knowledge of your topic.

But if you keep a beginner’s mind, you’re much more likely to strike the perfect balance, and find those appropriate challenges that will capture your readers’ imaginations.

The ultimate challenge

I want to leave you with one last thing to think about as you embark on your new journey to write more challenging content.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, to describe something as “autotelic” means it is “a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.”

You probably have goals for your content: you want it to persuade, to inform, to spread awareness, to sell.

If your writing is rewarding for readers, you’ll be on your way to achieving your other content marketing goals.

Reader Comments (20)

Thank you for this read Loryn! I’ve been struggling with actually generating some meatier content. I’ve only just started writing and blogging, and I feel as though most of my posts are fluff. I was particularly encouraged when you advised writing a more challenging piece while still learning about the subject. Much as I have wanted to write weightier pieces, I’ve felt that I am not able to because I am not yet a master in the topic. I’m excited to hear that it is ok for me to start writing more now! Thank you!

Yes, indeed, write now! As long as you’re honest about your experience, there is nothing wrong with covering a topic you’re still learning about. I’m sure some of the masters in your topic would argue that they are “still learning” as well 🙂

Great stuff Loryn. Empathy. So happy you used that word. Be empathetic and compassionate. Feel your audience. Or feel how they feel. See through their eyes. No problems engaging readers if you see issues from their perspective because you will know exactly what to write and how to write it to induce chats and to keep readers glued to the screen.

I read a great quote once to the effect that one of the best ways to really understand a topic is to write about it. Makes perfect sense and what you’ll find writing about a topic (especially ‘how-to’ type content), is that it really clarifies your understanding of the topic.

Especially after you read your first draft and you begin to realise what’s missing, what needs to be reworded or restructured, and so on.

Interesting thought. It’s good to remind ourselves that we don’t want to dumb down our content, or make it inaccessible. Balance is always good.

I’m curious though, what did your Shakespeare professor do to create flow? You say she gave you utensils, and knew how to meet or engage different students. I think the utensils in particular is a great metaphor but I’m curious to how she did that?

As for my Shakespeare professor, she was amazing at leading discussions. We spent entire classes just talking, and it felt very student-directed. But by the end of class she would have guided us to each of the points she wanted to make, while still allowing us to find our way there ourselves. It was so subtle, I never realized what was happening until class was over and I discovered I had learned something 😉

As a former college professor (philosophy), I have to point out that while that Shakespeare professor might have been perfect for you, some other students might have rated her poorly. For me when I was teaching, and now when I am writing or marketing, the ultimate compliment was or is: “You made me think.” But many students and readers most definitely do NOT want to think. They’d rather be told what to think.

So it’s wise to remember that In our world, it takes all kinds. No one way of writing or working suits every reader, and the readers who want something different aren’t wrong; they’re merely different.

You make a good point, Marcia, it does take all kinds. That’s why I said the key to writing engaging content is, truly, to know your audience, and present the challenges that are appropriate for where they are — which may end up being 95% spoon-feeding and 5% challenge 😉

Wonderful content, and also challenging! I love the tip about writing while you’re learning. It’s easy to forget how confusing or difficult was to learn something if we went through that a long time ago, and that makes it hard to relate to the readers. That’s going to change how I approach some of my content for sure!

I love this! I write about folklore so I don’t necessarily have something for readers to learn to do when they’re reading…but I still want them to walk away with new information that they’ll remember. And I’d like them to feel entertained while they do so. I’m going to try and focus on creating a story (or flow) in my next article to see what difference it makes!

Certainly! This tactic definitely applies to learning “about” as well as learning “to do.” Storytelling is a great way to create flow — all I really mean by “creating challenges” is simply giving your readers a chance to stretch their minds 🙂 Hope it goes well!

I’m often hesitant to write while I’m learning because I find it so much harder to articulate concepts in my own words. Also so much of my blog is based on personal experiences. This will really make me rethink how to approach it.

That said, I’m finding it difficult to make this concept concrete in terms of how to shift my approach. It would be helpful to have more concrete examples or perhaps to get feedback on where I’m being too simple or where I’m being too complex.

A webinar might not be a bad idea! I’d like to think the post itself is a good example of how to execute the strategy — I tried to write to readers as equals, and expand their horizons by taking them on a mental journey alongside me.

For me, it’s really a mindset shift: instead of worrying about leaving some readers behind, ask yourself if your content engages the readers who will want to dive in deeper. The actual techniques used in engaging, challenging writing are so numerous and varied they could be a subject for a graduate thesis 😉

And, having to articulate concepts in your own words is exactly why it’s so useful to write about something as you’re learning — not only do you learn the topic better, but the phrases that make the subject “click” for you are likely going to work for your readers as well.